Arthur Schopenhauer Quotes
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Astrology furnishes a splendid proof of the contemptible subjectivity of men in consequence whereof they refer everything to themselves and from every idea at once go straight back to themselves. Astrology refers the course of celestial bodies to the miserable ego; it also establishes a connection between the comets in heaven and the squabbles and rascalities on earth.
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Want and boredom are indeed the twin poles of human life.
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There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.
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The alchemists in their search for gold discovered many other things of greater value.
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Man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something which he thinks will make him so.
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I love looking at famous people. Because of the way they look. Because of the way photography makes them look famous.
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Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live.
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The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America, and the introduction of African slaves in their place.
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Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.
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Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood.
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Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.
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Meistens belehrt uns erst der Verlust über den Wert der Dinge.
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Nothing in life gives a man so much courage as the attainment or renewal of the conviction that other people regard him with favor; because it means that everyone joins to give him help and protection, which is an infinitely stronger bulwark against the ills of life than anything he can do himself.
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Every state of welfare, every feeling of satisfaction, is negative in its character; that is to say, it consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of existence.
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Men are the devils of the earth, and the animals are its tormented souls.
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What makes people hard-hearted is this, that each man has, or fancies he has, as much as he can bear in his own troubles.
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To repeat abstractly, universally, and distinctly in concepts the whole inner nature of the world , and thus to deposit it as a reflected image in permanent concepts always ready for the faculty of reason , this and nothing else is philosophy.
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To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.
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Our first ideas of life are generally taken from fiction rather than fact.
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Faith is like love: it does not let itself be forced.
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Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.
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Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.
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We seldom speak of what we have but often of what we lack.
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Nature shows that with the growth of intelligence comes increased capacity for pain, and it is only with the highest degree of intelligence that suffering reaches its supreme point.